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Camus Tribute

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Below are two pages from Tanaka Yutaka's Ai-ren which adequately sumarize Camus' point in the Myth of Sisyphus.

Existentialism: A Mockumentary

By Patrick Harris, Tanner Evans, and Phong Lam.

"Untitled"

The Right to Desire

By Anna Lockhart, Sarah Malkowski and Allison Copley

A Note on Aporias, etc.

I think I've finally come to be able to articulate my visceral objection to the value of notions such as Derrida's "aporias" or "self-deconstructing concepts", though I might note that this objection itself raises issues that comport with the deconstructionist and post-structuralist ideas we recently discusses. One example of such a concept was that of giving accordng to Focault's interpretation, in some sense a gift is arguably never a gift, since we invariably expect to get one sort of benefit or another from the giving, even if it is only a feeling of satisfaction, making the supposed act of generosity a kind of transaction. In my view, a understanding of the way all linguistic concepts work makes this less subversive of our basic understanding of the world than it might first appear.

It's a basic insight of the field of linguisitcs (and one that I'm fairly sure precedes thinkers such as Derrida) that the objective physical world does not contain within it pre-packaged facts to which we assign names. Rather, the labels we attach to objects and phenomena frame our perceptions of them as distinct entities. Somewhat in common with Foucault's notion of the exclusionary nature of the text, we can only understand a given linguistic concept (boy, cat, dog, democracy, etc.) by contrast with all other elements of reality. What language does is to mark off segments of the spectrum of phenomena we percieve so that we can make sense of the whole.

In one sense, this is arbitrary. Colors are an excellent excample. Some indigenious cultures are known to have only two words for color, roughly corresponding to light or dark. This does not mean they cannot recognize the difference between say, blue and purple, but they would still conceptually view those shades as falling under the same category.

Yet this arbitrariness of the boundaries of lingusitic concepts does not vitiate them of meaning. Reality is always too messy for humans to construct a single conceptual system that perfectly captures it. We are entirely capable of recognizing some actions as "gifts" as opposed to every other kind of action (including related concepts such as "purchase" or "theft"), even if there are flaws in the abosolute logical construction of the concept as it relates to our experience. It may be that people expect something from gifts (such as good-will or a positive feeling), but we do not weight these facts in our recognition of the actions as "gift" in the same way that we do actual material transactions.

In essence my point is that any abstract or even concrete concept can be rendered apparently meaningless by attempting to precisely pinpoint the lines that segment the part of the spectrum of reality which that concept occupies. But perhaps those lines are more like asymptotes, meaning the exact point at which one concept is exchanged for another (the human and the non-human, say?) is impossible to define. But I still feel that gifts, humanity, and democracy are like porn. We know it when we see it.

Of course, sometimes we may in fact disagree over what we are seeing, but in this case we simply take a magnifying glass, as it were, to those segmentations of our experience in the world in order to see whether a given phenomenon fits within our concept. The concept itself need not have any kind of absolute rational integrity, because it is arguable whether any concept does. Even porn.

Impossible Precision

On Tuesday we discussed the idea of deconstructionism in Derrida’s post-modernist philosophy. I was very intrigued about studying his work because of a previous English class I had taken in which we used structuralist and post-structuralist perspectives to analyze texts.

Structuralism is seen as largely a criticism of communication – particularly in writing – because that is how it is often applied. However, it is actually an examination of the formation and expression of thought. Our language is made up of signifiers for signs – such as the arbitrary word “tree” to signify the particular plant that is ascribed to. From a structualist perspective, as we gain more signs for each part of the tree, we gain a distinctive understand of its components. We no longer see trees as trees but as oak, poplars, and chestnuts. We no longer know it as a tree but as a trunk, bark, leaves, branches, etc. The more signs we understand and perceive the more distinctions that are possible between all of the trees parts, and as a result, the further it can be broken down. It then follows that the language which a person uses to communicate has an influence on their thinking. You cannot truly perceive the leaves as leaves without knowing the name (or signifier) for them.

Following this understanding further, you can posit that language does not just giver precision to thoughts, but can limit them within arbitrary confines defined by that particular language (the way signifiers and signs interact). For instance, the Russian language does not define colors so broadly as blue, yellow, red, etc. Russian speakers have different terms for specific types of blue and red built into their language as a fundamental component – this lends to them an ability to more greatly express colors and distinguish between them – as if they could see them better than an English speaker.

Derrida understands this and takes it a step further, saying that without signs there is no meaning. Signs allow for the categorization and understanding of the world. As the signs, and their signifiers become more and more in the complexity of each grows (the degree to which each is complex is dependent on its relationship with other signs). This is where is famous line that “there is nothing outside of the text” comes from. He then uses this to turn the system and networks of meaning that compose the entirety of human intellect. He, in particularly, critics writing – especially philosophical writing – in his reactive, deconstructionist perspective which explains the ways in which these signs make precise, simply, direct communication impossible.

A main point of Derrida’s philosophy is that we repress the inexhaustible number of meanings each sign has by lying to ourselves and saying that the meaning is simple and understood. There is no way for the meaning of words to be completely nailed down. It is a futile effort according to Derrida, and any attempt made by the author or speaker to gain control of context is equally vain. Once projected out into the world, our attempts to express our notions – whether in writing or speech – are separated from us and for the world to view as they will. There is no way for them to be altered in the aftermath.

The Difference Between What You Hear and What You See

This will be long, but I promise that the ending will be worth your while.

Many from our class and I went to the ten minute play Seven Jewish Children: a Play for Gaza. Though there was some diversity in the attendance, the majority of the theatre-goers were of a Jewish background. After the play was over, the audience had a discussion about their feelings about the play and the nature of context. In my typical manner, I spoke up first to explain the nature of meaning as a product of what is taken out from a text.

With context in mind, a few people spoke of how they loved the depoliticalized/universalized version of the play while feeling the political context was anti-Semitic. It is important to note that a historian who voiced a negative view about universality got an applause. He believed that universality rather than being decontextualizing is putting the play into a Christian moral context. This leads to the claim of the impossibility for a production to both have a decontextualized message.

The historian also had a claim about Existentialism, stating that existentialism forces us to recognized our contextualized individuality. I responded to him by stating my story, which leads to a different existential version of universality. I prefaced by explaining my Christian context:
  [skip this indented part if you do not care about me]

During my Christian years, I believed that the individual had the responsibility for forgiveness, which contrasts with praying to god that he forgive on ones behalf. This sentiment is reflected by my attachment to verses from the Gospel of Matthew like "Forgive and you shall be forgiven," "Judge not, less ye be judged," "Those at the right hand of the Father have done upon me [Jesus] what he has done on the least of you."

Because of my pre-existing moral sentiments, I became attached to these beliefs in Christianity but not any of the others including belief in a god. When I was old enough to realize that I had these moral sentiments regardless of my belief in god, god became extra baggage in my belief system. Without god, I started justifying my morality in new ways, namely with the Existential ideas that I found in my readings of Camus and other philosophers.

This brings me to my criticism of the historians belief existentialism precludes us from universal sentiments. While the universality I found in my existentialism phase carried some unjustified notions from my Christian context, I think there is something to my following argument: To recognize that someone is human is to forgive them. The obligation to recognize humanity stems from my understanding of Camus's notion of integrity, the contrary of philosophical suicide. One has to forgive because we are all on the same absurd plane of human existence.

To demonstrate this point, I brought up the story of Wiesenthal from his book The Sunflower: On the Possibility and Limits of Forgiveness. Wiesenthal, a Jew in a concentration camp, encounters a Nazi asking him. The Nazi expressed that he had rediscovered god in his act of penitence. Wiesenthal reacts to the Nazi's religiosity very negativity. He believes that the Nazi disprove god everyday by committing atrocious acts without any intervention from god.

In my existential phase, I would have argued that Wiesenthal is misunderstanding the Nazi's humanity. He could discover this by reflecting on his own Jewish context. The Jewish holy texts tell us of a people who commit of acts of genocide as commanded by their god in order to have a place to live in the Promise Land. In other words, should it be very strange for Nazis to have a Gott Mit Uns belt and desire Lebensraum (literally, living room/space).

Through this act of reflection, humans develop a solidarity that recognizes the contextualization that occurs because we are both beings-in-the-world and beings-with-others. This solidarity acts like universality for me.

Not to long ago, I had my anti-existential crisis. While I found it easy to forgive others and was prepared to lose anything, I realized in my studies of the Algerian Revolution that this ideal was never going to be achieved by humanity. Not everyone can forgive because they are much more attached and prone to anger. For every saint who can forgive his or her torturers, there are thousands who cannot. The Algerian Revolution taught me that people do learn something else rather than humanity from suffering. I learned that some of the same people who tortured by the Nazis ended up using the same torturing techniques on people in Algeria and what is now called Israel. That when one hears that someone suicide bombed your family, even those confident in their liberalism will be moved to extremely dehumanizing measures like torture to protect those they love.


Sartre expresses this idea I believe in his introduction to Henri Alleg's La Question in an essay called A Victory:

“It is normal for us to kill each other. Man has always struggled for his collective or individual interests. But in the case of torture, this strange contest of will, the ends seem to me to be radically different: the torturer pits himself against the tortured for his ‘manhood’ and the duel is fought as if it were not possible for both sides to belong to the human race…. Anyway, if he accepts the Moslems as human beings, there is no sense in killing them. The need is rather to humiliate them, to crush their pride and drag them down to animal level.” (Sartre xxxix, xli)

With that said, many people started echoing sentiments expressed in my existential period, including a Muslim scholar and a Christian seminary student. Until the end of the discussion, people continued to express very pro-pluralism views. As probably you know, I am quite cynical. People often hide prejudices under the silencing effect of pluralism.

At the very end, we were allowed to stay longer and donate to three causes. One was for Palestinian children, another for Memphis children, and the last for the Jewish Community. I kept my eyes out, and I quickly noticed that someone had placed the Palestinian collection basket on its sign. Later I noticed that someone had moved the money out of the Palestinian bowl, which was low already. I waited to the end to put five dollars in the bowl, so that no one had the opportunity to take it out. In retrospect, I was cynical enough to notice the quiet prejudice in the room, but too morally weak to bring it to everyone's attention at the time the acts of mal-intent occurred. This regret is my burden for being rightly suspicious.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. “A Victory.” Alleg, Henri. The Question. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2006. Print.